Book Notes: Harry Bosch goes undercover to find truths

Michael Connelly’s newest Harry Bosch detective novel is a thrilling orchestration. In his 31st work of fiction, the writer’s interplay of plot, character, sentiment, relevant themes and fine writing delivers with a tense urgency. “Two Kinds of Truth” is one of Connelly’s best and most affecting.

It’s as if the story is happening in real time Los Angeles. Jazz in the background, lunch at The Horseless Carriage, the sweep of Bosch’s dramatic city view from his deck, a dizzying sleep deprivation offset with coffee, the incessant bump of his cellphone, the nagging anxiety of a cold case that haunts everyone at The San Fernando Police Department are all base notes driving three separate inquiries Bosch must juggle simultaneously.

When the story begins, we find Bosch busy at work. He’s volunteering his time and expertise at San Fernando’s small police department that serves a 2.5-square-mile area surrounded by the city of L.A. The department suffered a reduction in force that prompted Chief Valdez to recruit a voluntary corps of retired law officers to help.

Bosch, at least 65, signed on to work the cold homicide cases in San Fernando after 40 years with the Los Angeles Police Department. He had set up his office in an unused jail cell and was systematically working the unsolved cases when Chief Valdez intervened. Bosch had been working on the troubling disappearance of Esmerelda Tavares, a young mother who vanished from her apartment while her baby slept in its crib.

Father and son pharmacists were found shot dead in their pharmacy, so Valdez asks Bosch to oversee an investigation that links to illegal opioid distribution. Suspected of running a pill mill — an operation backed by a Russian-Armenian syndicate — the pharmacists were filling opioid prescriptions presented by shills. Shills are addicts, essentially enslaved by the “cappers” or bosses who move them from pharmacy to pharmacy where they fill prescriptions written by unscrupulous or strong-armed doctors. Shills will do anything for their fix, meted out pill by pill. One of them, a woman named Elizabeth Clayton, is also routinely abused sexually.

As always, Bosch walks a tense, tricky line. He’s uncompromising, highly ethical and quietly defiant in pursuit of the truth. He rubs people the wrong way a lot of the time. When looking for the pharmacists’ killers, he agrees to go undercover. This decision imperils another case of utmost urgency, one whose outcome could destroy his professional reputation and jeopardize hundreds of cases he solved in LA.

Bosch teams up with favorite characters from previous novels, including his half-brother and the Lincoln Lawyer, Mickey Haller, and his old partner, Jerry Edgar. His daughter, Maddie, now in her second year of college, is the one character guaranteed to round out her driven, task-oriented father. Bosch needs Haller to represent his interests when a killer he’d arrested and imprisoned frames him, saying he planted evidence. But just before the court hearing, Bosch goes undercover in a series of suspenseful scenes.

In an exciting and moving conclusion, the two kinds of truth referenced in the title clash. Connelly writes that Bosch knew “there were two kinds of truth in this world. The truth that was the unalterable bedrock of one’s life and mission. And the other, malleable truth of politicians, charlatans, corrupt lawyers, and their clients, bent and molded to serve whatever purpose was at hand.” These are timely thoughts by what is now a legendary character who defies irrelevance.

Connelly brings the national opioid crisis up close and personal in “Two Kinds of Truth.” When Bosch sees what’s happening, he is deeply affected. His actions are stunning. Also stunning is the love and support he receives in this book — long overdue and very satisfying acknowledgement of his dedication and expertise.— Rae Padilla Francoeur can be reached at rae@raefrancoeur.com.

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